Well at least somebody took note of Apple’s arrogant habit of ignoring court rulings and the shiny-happy-overpricing company is now to pay for Samsung’s legal expenses in the UK.

Apple could not prove Samsung copied the iPad with its tablet designs but that didn’t stop it from posting a public statement that the court found “false and misleading”. The statement was posted on Apple’s UK site but cited international court rulings that portrayed Samsung’s gear as “uncool” copies. Apple has since removed it but the statement allegedly racked up more than 1 million hits by then.

UK Court of Appeal’s Sir Robin Jacob said the lawyer fees to be awarded against Apple should be on indemnity basis. He pointed out Apple’s conduct “warranted such an order.”

Additionally, Apple is found to have added “false matter” to its statement, carefully implying that comparisons of Apple and Samsung gear were of actual devices rather than patents. “By this statement Apple was fostering the false notion that the case was about the iPad. And that the Samsung product was “not as cool” as the iPad”, the judge said.

The judge accused Apple of comments that caused much confusion, suggesting that the UK court’s decision is not in line with the rest of the world. The judge’s statement further reads:“The reality is that wherever Apple has sued on this registered design or its counterpart, it has ultimately failed. (…) Apple’s additions to the ordered notice clearly muddied the water and the message obviously intended to be conveyed by it”.

In what increasingly seems as a global game of legal ping pong, Samsung has lost a US trade case against Apple. Samsung has just won a case in a Dutch court in the Hague, but Apple seems to have some serious home court advantage.

Judge Thomas Pender of the US International Trade Commission said in a statement that Samsung infringed on four of Apple’s patents. Apparently these include patents for touch screen technology and front face of the iPhone, but the decision is preliminary and due to be reviewed by the full commission.

From what went down so far, Apple seems to be winning in home court, and has earned itself $1 billion this August. Samsung has just won a ruling in Netherlands, and, of course, the Patent Trolling Open continues.

Apple’s invincibility on the US soil has led some to question whether the cult of Apple is a wise thing to have in the long run. Samsung’s spokesperson said that the “initial determination could lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices for the American consumer”.

The class action against Sony over the fiasco involving its PSN service is about to be dismissed, or at least all signs point to that.

The case argued that Sony showed negligence and violated consumer protection rights of California by denying restitution and injunctive relief claims. It was said that earlier attacks made it clear Sony’s network was vulnerable, but that the company still did nothing to address this.

However, judge Anthony Battaglia dismissed these claims for lack of evidence of actual economic loss. Plaintiffs apparently failed to produce any actual proof, although amending and resubmitting evidence is still an option.

Apparently, the fact that PSN service is free of charge helped Sony with charges of violating consumer protection laws. By consenting to the company’s privacy policy, users agreed to the notion of “no such thing as perfect security”. Thus, customers had no right to expect uninterrupted service at all times.

The case can be amended and evidence resubmitted by 9th of November, but it is not very likely that Sony will be found guilty in the end.

Former president of the Industrial Designers Society of America has Peter Bressler taken the stand as Apple’s expert witness in the company’s legal crusade against Samsung, and claimed, quite expectedly if we may add, that iPhone and Galaxy phones are “substantially the same”.

Bressler testified about three patents for which Samsung is being sued and said that a dozen of Samsung’s products infringe on them. Asked about the actual likeness of the devices and their distinctiveness on the market, he said that Samsung willingly chose the design that mimicked Apple.

It appears however that Bressler wasn’t so persuasive when cross-examined, as he conceded that mixing up the two brands is unlikely, despite Samsung’s efforts. He added, however, that industrial designers notice small details that make up the image of a device, of which regular users may not be aware.

Bressler also cited Best Buy’s survey, whereby Samsung products were returned because customers thought they were buying iPads. To be fair though, the terms iPhone and iPad have often been mistaken for generic names for phones and tablets, and we have a strong hunch by which camp exactly.

Over the course of his testimony, Brissler dismissed Samsung’s nitpicking over radius of the corners and whatnot. He will take the stand again on Tuesday, while the original Macintosh designer Susan Kare is expected to follow.

The German Federation of Consumer Organizations has threatened Blizzard with legal action unless the company highlights the requirement for constant internet connection on Diablo III packaging.

Strangely enough, even though some companies tried similar methods in the past, and quite expectedly stirred a whole lot of trouble, Blizzard still decided to run with it. Now, it is given until July 27, 2012, to do as the group asks or face legal action.

In related news, the company has been fined in South Korea over not refunding customers for the Error 37, which rendered the game unplayable due to sheer number of players and resulting server errors. Thankfully, the fine is £4,500, so we're talking pocket money for the company.

Well, it's not the victory many players hoped for, but will probably be enough to shut everyone up. Besides, those without an internet connection can't complain much to begin with.

A US judge has dismissed Apple's injunction claim against Motorola, although he's left them an option of appeal.

The final 38-page ruling reads:"Apple is complaining that Motorola's phones as a whole ripped off the iPhone as a whole (...) But Motorola's desire to sell products that compete with the iPhone is a separate harm - and a perfectly legal one - from any harm caused by patent infringement." The judge argued that Apple failed to prove that it lost market share, brand recognition or customer goodwill to Motorola.

Analysts aren't surprised at the outcome. Namely, the judge was inclined to dismiss the case and had cancelled a jury trial earlier.

Patent consultant Florian Mueller said he is sure that the case will be appealed to the Federal Circuit. He added that Apple "didn't do its homework in terms of expert reports and witnesses" to get something out of the case.

Seeing as how nobody is interested in backing down, we're likely to hear more news on this front.

A US bloke is suing Apple for making all sorts of claims about its voice search machine Siri, which it could not deliver.

Apple made all sorts of claims about Siri, which was about the only thing new in its iPhone 4S. Frank Fazio filed a federal class action lawsuit against Apple saying Siri commercials are “fundamentally and designedly false and misleading.

Judging by the commercials, Apple’s iPhone Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface (Siri) is meant to be taken seriously. John Malkovich is in one commercial, lounging in a living room asking Siri for Linguica. Siri tells him there are five restaurants close to him that serve it.

However Fazio said that he asked Siri for directions to a certain place, or to locate a store. Siri either did not understand what he was asking or after a very long wait time responded with the wrong answer.

Fruit themed toymaker Apple's legal tactics to kill off its main smartphone rival in court, rather than doing normal thinks like compete, has run aground. Jobs' Mob wanted to get the new Samsung G3 banned, before it could kill off the iPhone, but found that its earlier legal tactics had counted against it.

The problem was that it thought it would be a good idea loading US District Court Judge Lucy Koh with complaints in the hope that something would stick. Now she says she is a little too busy to deal with a new one and does not want to lump the new Samsung complaints with the old ones. Koh said that if Apple seeks to file a motion to enjoin sales of the Samsung Galaxy S3, Apple will have to request a new hearing date from the Court.

Samsung is launching the new phone in the US on 21 June. It already has good reviews and in some aspects makes the Jobs' Mob effort look steam powered.

Apple has not changed its iPhone format much for ages. The iPhone 4S just had a voice activated search gimmick called Siri, which didn't work properly outside of the US and refused to direct you to anywhere that was immoral. The search engine had to be “fixed” later when it started recommending that you buy a Samsung Android phone instead.

Chinese telecom outfits Huawei and ZTE have been banned from tendering for state contracts in Algeria for two years and been fined by a local court after being caught in a bribery scandal.

The pair bribed executives at the state owned telecoms network, Algérie Télécom. A former executive at the telecoms network, Mohamed Boukhari and a businessman, Chami Madjdoub have also been found guilty of receiving illegal payments and money laundering to conceal the sources of those payments.

The bribery took place between 2003 and 2006 and the two men were sentenced to 18 years in prison, have had their property confiscated and been fined US$64,000 each. Huawei and ZTE have been fined US$38,400 each and banned from tendering with state-owned companies for two years.

Three Chinese officials, Dong Tao, Chen Zhibo and Xiao Chuhfa were sentenced in their absence to 10 years in prison. Additionally, an international arrest warrant has been issued for their extradition back to the country.

However the two companies denied involvement. They said they were victims of the bribery. It said the problem was all caused by workers who were involved in a dodgy deal between each other.

Sources have confirmed to us that Silicon Knights has apparently decided to scale back operations, and as part of this decision the company has let some of its employees go. The decision was made to allow the company to move to a core group focusing all of its efforts on future opportunities.

The interesting part of this is that the company claims that the rumors regarding the developers’ reliance on Nintendo are false. Nintendo is said to have dropped the developer following an unsuccessful bid to prevail in its lawsuit against Epic.

Despite all of the bad news, it is possible that an Eternal Darkness sequel might actually be in the pipeline as no one bothered to deny that this was the case. No numbers have been confirmed as to how many employees were let go, but we hear that it was not a large number.